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Monday, July 15, 2013

Burning Stars

Whether it hits you personally or affects you across miles
and time, tragedy is always hard to process. It can steal your breath, take
away all of your tears, and leave you feeling drained. Of course, we all handle
it differently. My husband Jeremy broods on it in silence, mulling over any
pain with deliberate and focused thought. I’ve only seen this laidback
character cry once and that was over the loss of his beloved childhood dog.

I, on the other hand, am a crier. I wear my big ol’ heart
right on my sleeve, and I also tend to dwell on the sadness until its
all-consuming. It’s the curse of being a sensitive, empathetic soul. I once
spent fifteen minutes crying over a dead goose I’d never even met, and I’ve
spent countless hours crying over sad stories about animals and people on
television, in movies and books, and even on the internet.

All the crying and hyper-sensitivity probably gets on
Jeremy’s nerves, but in the end, neither of us have mastered the correct way to
grieve or deal with tragedy…mainly because there is no correct way.

This subject came up over the weekend.

Despite it being Sunday and one of the few days that we can
sleep in, I rose early last Sunday. We had plans to meet my parents for
breakfast, but the truth was that I just woke up early and couldn’t go back to
sleep. I went about my morning ritual as normal. Brush teeth, shower, then I
went in the living room and checked my phone.

The first news I saw was pretty unbelievable, and at this
point, I’m not quite sure I was awake.

Friends on Facebook were lamenting the death of Cory
Monteith, my favorite actor on the television series “Glee.” Status updates
like, “I can’t believe Cory Monteith is dead,” caused me to wake up faster than
I had ever intended.

I loped back to the bedroom, jumped on the bed, and shook
Jeremy from his sleep. “Cory Monteith is dead,” I said, watching his glazed
over eyes slowly focus on me. “He’s dead!” And then with all the drama of a
teenage girl who had just been broken up with, I sobbed.

Looking back on that moment, I feel rather silly. I didn’t
know Cory. I can’t even pretend that there was the slightest chance that I
would ever meet him. He wasn’t family; he wasn’t a friend. Later in the
morning, while moping around the house in a grief-induced fog, I asked Jeremy
why the death of a person I didn’t know had affected me so.

His answer was profoundly simple and shed a light on my
grief, as well as the grief of millions of others when faced with the tragic
death of a celebrity.

He said, “He was part of something you valued; plus, it’s
always sad when someone dies.”

When Princess Diana died, I remember crying as I watched her
funeral on television. Just the other night, while watching a documentary about
Nancy Reagan, I teared up when they showed the footage from Ronald Reagan’s
funeral. I didn’t know Princess Di. I didn’t know Ronald Reagan. But both were
a part of my childhood, a part of something that with their deaths we would
never get back.

Cory Monteith was a part of “Glee.” Faithfully, through good
episodes and bad, I have watched “Glee” since it first aired in 2009. I have
laughed at, cried with, and cheered for the character of Finn Hudson, portrayed
by Cory Monteith. I have sang along with him on my iPod and read about him on
Twitter. I didn’t know him, and now I never will. He’s another star that burned
out way too soon, a tragedy that will stick with this fangirl for quite some
time.